‘To fulfill a wish like thiiis, you must bring down an abyssal entity.’
In the [Cthulhu World], an overused cliché.
In short: insane nonsense.
I openly pulled up my mana in case Gong Isu suddenly went “Kkyeeeek!” and lunged—
but he just kept talking, completely unguarded.
“Kid. Hear me out to the end before you judge. To the end.”
Ha—
What do I do?
Chances were high it wasn’t worth hearing, but brushing it off carelessly...
“Hm... fine. I’ll at least listen.”
Which, in a way, might be the herald of a cliché too.
You know the one: the protagonist listens all the way through to the cultist’s pitch—then bursts into mad laughter and agrees.
“Good to see a positive reaction.”
“It’d be wiser to call it a cautious reaction—and worry.”
“Very Kim Sinhwa of you. I’m pleased.”
“Haah—”
Watching me sigh, Gong Isu spoke in an easy voice.
“Your butler cooks well.”
What random nonsense is he about to—
But—
what followed sounded more plausible than I expected.
“Ah... I know what that is. But there’s a problem, isn’t there?”
“I know exactly which problem you mean. I’ll tell you what Kim Sinhwa told me.”
There he goes again with that Kim Sinhwa.
To this Gong Isu, [Kim Sinhwa] isn’t me.
In a sense he’s like a cultist serving the conceptual entity called [Kim Sinhwa].
“Listen carefully—”
Gong Isu spun up another story.
And maybe this time...
“Really?”
“Really. I tested it in the future, too. Why it had to be that time—why it has to be this time—you see it now, don’t you?”
“I do—but—”
We talked longer.
And in the end, I decided to accept Gong Isu’s proposal.
“U-hahahahaha!”
“Kid, what’s with you? Why laugh like that?”
“It felt on-theme for the mood, so I tried a burst of maniacal laughter.”
“My face is a camera, so I’m not great at reading expressions—right now I’m looking at you the way one looks at a madman.”
“I’ll remember that look.”
Anyway, this plan means Gong Isu needs to stay at the [Hungry Manor] for a few days...
“...”
Still makes me uneasy.
I have to be careful not to become the [future Kim Sinhwa] that drives him to rewind time a fourth time.
Ten days and a week more passed from the day Kim Sinhwa accepted Gong Isu’s proposal.
“Hmmm...”
Im Heeyoung, a combat civil servant with Special Team 1 of the Foreigners Administration, looked around and spoke to her junior, Bae Jinwoo.
“Come on, keep up. It’s a small hill under a 400-meter radius. We can get there on foot in no time.”
“Eesh—easy for you to say, Senior; you’re a body-enhancement type. I’m dying here. Please, a slower pace.”
After waiting a moment, Im Heeyoung prodded him with a question.
“What do you think?”
“Senior, this place is something else. Not kidding. Yin energy, demonic energy, the terrain is uncanny—and don’t you feel this absurdly heavy chill?”
Bae Jinwoo’s voice tumbled on, agitated.
“Right. This place won’t be easy.”
“It’s worse than ‘not easy.’ My sensing is already saturated—if I suddenly scream and bolt, please don’t hold it against me.”
He’s the one with excellent sensing.
Comparatively weaker at sensing, Im Heeyoung tightened the belts on the leather gauntlets over her hands and asked carefully:
“Don’t just groan—well? Can we push farther? If you say no, we turn back.”
A forest with danger so thick you could feel it without any superhuman perception.
Trees unnaturally dense.
Darkness pooled on all sides.
And from somewhere—
a gloomy—
we-eung—
ae-ooo—
meow—
Animal calls?
No, cats?
An omen of a phenomenon? Or does it mean even small animals like cats can survive here?
“Hmm...”
Bae Jinwoo made a sound like he was focusing and slowly spoke.
“I think it’s okay. A bit farther—let’s go a bit farther. There shouldn’t be a big problem.”
“Got it. But if something goes wrong, tell me immediately.”
Crack— crick.
They say you get used to it with experience, but at this moment, I’ll never adapt.
“Are we fine just the two of us?”
“We’ll be fine. We’re not here chasing something apocalyptic, right?”
As if to reassure her, Bae Jinwoo’s tone lightened.
“True. If it were truly dangerous, they wouldn’t have sent just us.”
“Exactly. But Senior, be careful. This isn’t just any town—this is [Paju]. Things can happen even the brass didn’t foresee.”
At that, Im Heeyoung knit her brow.
‘He’s not wrong.’
People from other regions often ask how humans live in a place called “Paju.”
A city stuck to that horrific Great Bulwark.
A bizarre region packed with places that, anywhere else, would be walled off and closed to the public.
Cultist strongholds too numerous to count.
Ancient ruins that weren’t there yesterday—then suddenly are.
Nonhuman species forming colonies all over.
Fixers striding about openly with weapons.
Crime syndicates using rockets and autocannons—not knives and fists—stirring up conflicts at the level of civil war.
Et cetera, et cetera—
List the problems and it never ends—but Paju is, in any case, a place where people live.
Born and raised in that very Paju, Im Heeyoung felt a prickly discomfort every time outsiders put stress on the word [Paju].
“Senior—?”
“No matter that it’s [Paju], what could happen on a hill this small? Up to the [Pension], there shouldn’t be major trouble.”
Whether to prove her words or not, she walked a little faster.
“And the rumors about a [Pension]—that means someone at least made it there and came back, right? Don’t you think?”
“You’re right, Senior. And for Team Lead Yang Seohu’s sake, we should give it our best.”
There was a smile in Bae Jinwoo’s voice.
Suddenly, a strange feeling prickled at Im Heeyoung.
“Team lead?”
“Pardon?”
“Didn’t we come to Paju with our team lead?”
“We did— we did.”
“Right. I don’t think it was just the two of us.”
Didn’t the team lead say it would be a three-person unit?
“Do you mean three, including the team lead? Or if you count the team lead, does that make four?”
A blatantly odd question.
But without sensing the oddness in his words, Im Heeyoung kept walking.
“Hm... three? No, four?”
“Aha, three then. Including Team Lead Yang Seohu, three-person unit— right.”
“Is it?”
“The team lead went on ahead again and left us behind. We should hurry to that pension.”
“Ah, should we?”
“Don’t stop. If we’re later, the team lead will again... you know.”
“Right. Let’s hurry. But where were we going again?”
“The pension. Remember. The pension.”
“Right. We were headed to the pension.”
Crunch— chrunch-crunch—
Grass crushed under her toes.
Meow— aeo-ooong—
Cat cries again.
Trees without end.
“Jinwoo.”
“Yes.”
“What was the problem at the pension again?”
“We came because weird rumors were floating around in Ododong, right?”
“Ah, Ododong.”
Ododong, Paju-si.
A small neighborhood in Paju City.
And the Jangmyeongsan she was walking through was the mountain right next to Ododong.
By administrative unit, you could say Jangmyeongsan sits inside Ododong.
While investigating an incident, Im Heeyoung and Bae Jinwoo talked with Ododong residents and heard rumors about a pension on Jangmyeongsan.
So they came he—
‘Wait, something’s off. Isn’t this a bit different from what Jinwoo and I said earlier?’
A curiously blurry memory.
“Senior, nothing is off. This is a very simple inquiry.”
“Right, a simple inquiry.”
“When something’s strange, you investigate.”
Im Heeyoung is a combat civil servant with the Foreigners Administration; her real job is to locate and ‘capture’ or ‘eliminate’ anomalous phenomena and extraplanar entities across regions.
If you confirm clearly strange intel—of course you investigate its substance.
So Im Heeyoung set her mind to going a bit deeper.
“Jinwoo. The mood keeps getting weirder—are you sure we’re okay?”
“We’re okay. Keep going.”
“Alright.”
‘We shouldn’t go farther.’
But Im Heeyoung set her mind to going a bit deeper.
‘Why?’
Because she felt a wordless intuition she couldn’t explain.
“Jinwoo, I’m getting a weird hunch. I think we really do need to go farther.”
“Correct.”
Without glancing at Jinwoo, Im Heeyoung kept her eyes strictly forward and advanced.
“Jinwoo—”
She turned her head to check on him—but for some reason, didn’t.
“Jinwoo?”
Eyes forward only.
“Jin...”
No need to pay attention.
“No need to pay attention.”
Keep going.
“I’ll keep going.”
In a state of feeling no worry at all, Im Heeyoung kept walking through the forest of Jangmyeongsan.
“Jinwoo is...?”
Since she had come alone from the beginning, there was no need to look for a colleague or make needless noise.
“...”
From here on is what matters.
Silently, she walked on.
It was certainly a small hill—yet somehow the path ran on forever, and only after sunset did Im Heeyoung finally reach the very pension she’d aimed for.
A massive mansion of staggering scale.
Whether it was intentional aesthetic or not—anyway.
Now, knock.
No problem.
Act like an ordinary guest and they’ll welcome you kindly.
Thump-thump—
Im Heeyoung knocked on the pension’s door.
Creeeeak—
A young man with long, dyed-blond hair opened up. Tall and handsome. Im Heeyoung felt an inexplicable fondness for this stranger.
“...”
Feel fondness. Smile and wait for his question.
“Are you a guest?”
Nod and say you’re a guest.
“Yes. I’m a guest.”
“Oh, come on...”
The blond man looked troubled for a moment, then called toward the inside.
“Wizard! We’ve got another guest!”
But no answer came from whoever “Wizard” was.
He watched her for a beat, then said with an awkward smile:
“Uh—would you like to come in for now?”
Now follow him inside.
She wore a briefly uneasy look, but seeing Bae Jinwoo already seated in the living room, Im Heeyoung let out a breath of relief.
Right. No problem after all.
“Alright, guests. I’ll prepare pasta for you now.”
A man’s voice came from the kitchen.
“In order for you to stay safely at our pension, there are rules you must follow. I’ll explain them now.”
